500 Ounces

Odd title for a post, I know. But what does this mean?

It's the exact amount of breastmilk in my freezer.

You're asking yourself: Why the heck are you telling me this and why do you have that much stashed away? Is there another baby you're not telling us about? Did Madonna have a 2 for 1 special in Malawi and giving you one?

Nope.

I'm heading back to work as of June 29th. I got a call from the government with 'an offer I couldn't refuse'. Full-time permanent position. This means that I will be giving up half of my maternity leave and going back early. Michael and I talked about it, and he will be taking the rest of the parental leave, until the end of the year. Michael's always joked about taking 1/2 of the parental leave, since he was 1/2 the reason we had a baby in the first place!

Some other reasons why it's easier to go back before scheduled:
-Susan's my second baby, so I've already gone through this going back to work scenario.
-In Taiwan, women return to work after 1 month. In the US, women return after 6 weeks. I've been off work almost 8 months so far-I'm pretty damn lucky to be in Canada.
-Michael's great with the girls, and I know that he can handle them. They are pretty easy kids to take care of.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to be at home for the rest of the year, and I'll probably cry my first week of work(but not at the office!). But I'm also very excited.

5 Months Old

Susan's still going strong. Her rolling over is getting better. In fact, she rolled on her back last night at 3AM(yes, she sleeps on her tummy and I can hear you yelling at me!), woke up completely, and called me. When I showed up, she was wriggling and proud of her accomplishments, and wanted to celebrate by eating.

I managed to stumble to bed about 20 minutes later...

Something new I learned with Jillian the other day:
She was eating her rice and enjoying it. As she was working on her last mouthful of food, I placed a bowl of applesauce in front of her. She immediately spat out her rice so she could enjoy her dessert.

Lesson learned!

Oink!

We were sick this past week. Michael picked up a bug on Thursday, and I didn't get sick until Sunday. Luckily, both girls are fine. Hopefully, they're past the point of infection, because there's no way I'd want them to get what we have. It was like a really bad cold, or a flu. I was looking at the symptoms of swine flu, but it didn't seem as intense as what they were saying.

I left 'my' Michael at home on Saturday, June 8th so I could visit Fawn, 'her' Michael, and their girls. Now that I think about it, we hadn't seen each other in about 9 years, but I felt very comfortable and we were chatting as if we had seen each other only last week. Ahhh, the power of the internet! Fawn, I hope you guys didn't catch this, but if you did, I am really, really sorry. It was only the day after I saw you that it hit me.

So I spent this week in isolation. I didn't even really call anyone because I sounded like one of those people who are trying to disguise their voices on the phone. Really, I sounded like a robot who coughed a lot.

Anyway, we're on the mend, and we should both be 100% by the end of the weekend.

Speaking of health issues, I saw my doctor yesterday about the dermoid cyst that he removed. I thanked him for doing a really great job. His reply? "Of course!" What a confident man. Anyway, they poked at the cyst and determined that it wasn't cancerous- it wasn't showing signs of being cancer anyway during the ultrasound, so I never worried about that. I asked if they found anything cool in there, like my twin sister(can you tell I watch too many wonky shows?), and he said no, just the usual stuff, nothing exciting. Everything is smooth sailing from here on in. Case closed!

I'm happy that the weather is finally getting nice and warm. I was afraid that summer was never going to show it's face. I'm even able to get the girls all dressed up in their cute summer outfits! I must say that that's one of the perks of having girls. Do I dress them up in *this* cute outfit,

or *that* cute outfit?


Or Jillian could just step on her sister and avoid all of this:

Rolling, Rolling, Rolling

I was hanging out on the bed with Susan while I was talking to my friend Shawn. I put her on her tummy, and *poof*, she rolled over!

I told Shawn, and his response was, "OK". LOL... I found it funny because I would have had the same reaction before I had kids.

I was practicing with her every time I took her out of the crib or when she had her tummy time. She seemed to like it. Before this, she would move around like a minute hand on a clock when on her tummy.

One of my favourite things to do to her is to kiss her neck while sounding like Cookie Monster. She starts to giggle (then gets the hiccups). I LOVE IT!!!

Jillian's still indifferent to Susan, but today she's started drooling...on purpose?! And she knows that she's doing it too; she even makes little bubbles! What the heck is that about??? I guess she sees all the wet shirts that Susan slobbers on? At least she's still feeding herself. She can really put away Shepherd's Pie by herself. And I'm thrilled that she was asleep by 8:30pm tonight. For the last week, she's been up till midnight. I've had to wake her up before 7am, and make sure she gets little or no naptime. It finally worked! Now I have to keep her entertained in the morning instead of crawling back to bed-boo hoo!

Susan's not ready to eat cereal yet, but I'm sure in the next month or two, she'll be rearing to go. She's already showing interest in watching us eat, and even makes chewing motions when we do. She's already got her fists in her mouth, and Michael helped her tonight with her toes.

Wow! This was really rambling. Hope I didn't bore you too much!